The Linux Gamers' HOWTO
Copyright © 2001, 2002 Peter Jay Salzman
Copyright © 2003, 2004 Peter Jay Salzman, Frédéric Delanoy
2004-11-13 v.1.0.6
Abstract
The same questions get asked repeatedly on Linux related mailing lists and news groups.
Many of them arise because people don't know as much as they should about how things "work" on
Linux, at least, as far as games go. Gaming can be a tough pursuit; it requires knowledge from
an incredibly vast range of topics from compilers to libraries to system administration to
networking to XFree86 administration ... you get the picture. Every aspect of your computer
plays a role in gaming. It's a demanding topic, but this fact is shadowed by the primary goal
of gaming: to have fun and blow off some steam.
This document is a stepping stone to get the most common problems resolved and to give
people the knowledge to begin thinking intelligently about what is going on with their games.
Just as with anything else on Linux, you need to know a little more about what's going on behind
the scenes with your system to be able to keep your games healthy or to diagnose and fix them
when they're not.